Tag Archives: The Vampyre Legal Chronicles

Reader Question: Christine, where do you get your ideas for your characters and stories from?

Answer: Mostly from real life. True. I remember when Reckless Nights In Rome was first published, a reader said that she couldn’t believe any girl would jump out of a window to avoid the blind date from hell and that she preferred REAL LIFE. Well, it DID actually happen to a close relative of mine, not once but twice. When I was told the whole sorry saga, and after I’d stopped laughing, I remember thinking that it would be a great hook for a story… and the rest, as they say, is history. And no, I’m not telling anyone her name.

Anyhow, to get back to the question where my ideas/inspiration comes from…

I write things I’ve been through, seen, understand, lost, loved, hurt, hated, endured, and I place all of those life experiences inside a world that does not exist but mirrors the real world. Does that make sense?

I use those experiences to build and create real characters readers want to root for and care about, even when they make the wrong choice to try to fix a problem (especially the guys) and end up in an even bigger mess. And along with mirroring real life my characters are fun, sometimes insane, and when they make me laugh out loud, I can be pretty certain they’ll make a reader laugh, too.

In the old days when I was submitting stories, I remember an editor telling me to tone down the laughs, the family with the kids and the dog. Hmm. I hope she’s read SEAN because you guys laughed out loud at all that.

Most of all, I write from the heart.

I write about family, whether created by non-blood friends (like Nico and Bronte who embrace many into their fold), or the vampyres who are battling the greatest evil to save our world. At the core of all my books is the bond of family.

Speaking of family, we’re on the road to wellness after pneumonia and getting better every day.

Once upon a time, the year was 2007, I started writing a futuristic urban fantasy. This was before I decided to write contemporary romance. I’ve been reading since I was four years old. And I read everything you can think of from paranormal thrillers to memoirs to noir, even now. I’ve loved reading romance since picking up my first Georgette Heyer story when I was fourteen. And I especially loved reading romances with everything— laughter, tears, brave and independent women with hot alpha males and how they fall from lust into love. The romance genre appeals to me because it can, and does, include everything from slapstick comedy, angst, mystery, thriller, suspense, sci-fi, history, dark erotica, gothic, and urban fantasy. As long as the story has authentic and valid emotional conflicts between two characters at its heart and finishes with a Happy Ever After or Happy For Now, a writer can pretty much do what they want.

At that time, with my kids almost grown, two careers behind me, one in international banking and the other in interior design, and a short stay in hospital (which was a huge wake-up call) I returned to my first and secret love—writing fiction. In my head I wanted to write stories that entertain a reader. One reader. Stories that made that reader happy. Even today, twenty four published books later, that reader sits front and centre of everything I write and everything I do.

The first Ludlow Hall story, Reckless Nights In Rome, was published in April 2012. But before that, let me tell you that from 2008 that story went through six or seven lives. Nico was actually Raphael. Bronte was Chloe. The premise and theme were totally different, too. It must have been revised and edited about twelve times. Can you tell I didn’t want to let it go? And it was never supposed to be a series of stand alone romances set in the Ludlow Hall world either. Now there are ten books in the franchise with more to come. And more of the offshoot series, Ludlow Nights, coming too. I’m also working on a Monroe Brothers trilogy linked to my romantic suspense story, Desert Orchid. There are more Golddigger short stories coming, but released monthly. And the sneak peek behind the scenes at Ludlow Hall.

Anyway, back to the futuristic urban fantasy; in 2009 I entered the beginning of the fantasy in a writing competition based in the United States and run by a lovely group of girls who called themselves the Romance Junkies. After months of competition which included the first thousand words and a three thousand word pivotal moment, my story came fifth and reader feedback was awesome. That book was Constantine and The Witch. The story was about a vampire and a witch and was set in our world in the near future, 2069. However, as I began writing Constantine – the vampire, and Azalea – the witch, it became clear that the flashbacks to what had happened to humanity in the past were too numerous and, for me, made the story choppy. Personally speaking, I loathe flashbacks in books and in movies. So I put the story aside to let it simmer in my brain. But on a regular basis I added reams and reams of notes about the future world after a catalogue of global catastrophes happen in our time, an Ebola virus mutating and becoming airborne, and gateways opening to a parallel universe allowing magic to leach into our reality and this world. I also included demons, a variety of witches, powerful vampire clans and, of course, humanity teetering on the edge of extinction. Fun, eh?

My first love is paranormal romance. In the genre, anything goes. Heroes can be as unPC as they like—of course they pay for it big time. *Evil laugh* And so in 2011 I began writing The Vampyre Legal Chronicles, stories based around the powerful family of global corporate lawyers, Gillespie Pattullo and Hindmarch, who just happen to be vampyres. The first four books were published from 2014-2016 and are based in the present day and detail the circumstances of unnatural events which lead to a global crisis, an Ebola pandemic, the virtual destruction of our world and how alternative realities open gateways that allow magic – good and bad – to enter our world. I wrote about an Ebola outbreak before the African Ebola catastrophe. I wrote about alternate realities before the Hadron Collider deep underground in Cern proved the theory. There is tried and tested scientific theory of the earth’s polarity moving from North to South causing birds to fall from the sky, mammals and millions of fish stranded upon our shores. Make of that what you will.

The first four vampyre books introduce readers to the politics and intrigue and arcane rules that surround the vampyre world in order to keep it secret from humankind. Constantine is mentioned on a regular basis from book one through to book four, but readers don’t actually ‘meet’ him until the end of book four. Book five of The Vampyre Legal Chronicles, CONSTANTINE, jumps right into 2069 where the vampyres, humans and white magic do everything they can to live together and thrive against the ultimate evil. Book five will be released this year. Yes, it’s taken me six years to get to this point with the world and the tale. At the heart of the world are the vampyres with their romantic and non-romantic relationships including family, friends, enemies, because writing about people with the issues common to everyone (whether they’re a vampyre or a cop or a scientist or a hot Italian who owns Ludlow Hall) is what I love to do.

I’m not one of those authors who writes with a complicated coordinated plan. I use an outline as a sort of map but rarely follow it, preferring to see what’s going to happen next. And let me tell you my characters never fail to surprise me. For me I need to be excited and totally immersed in the story to make it work and something needs to tingle my creativity. Nine times out of ten it’s a problem. A character has a problem, comes up with an idea on how to fix it (always the wrong solution) and away I go. For example in Reckless Nights In Rome, Italian playboy and committed bachelor Nico’s problem is that he wants Bronte Ludlow’s house and land to complete his sale of Ludlow Hall and the owner is Not Interested. Doesn’t sound much of a problem does it? But Nico makes BIG mistakes in his approach to Bronte. She surely puts him through his paces before he attains his goal and they fall madly in love into the bargain. Nico, Bronte and Rosie pulled me right into their world and have kept me, and hundreds of thousands of readers, there ever since.

It’s important for me to keep my writing fresh and new. Some readers love the Vampyre series, some don’t and prefer me to write contemporary romance grounded in the real world. When an author provides a mixture of genres, the downside is those who love one genre complain when another is published. That’s life. But I always take notice when I receive that tingle at the base of my spine. An author needs to follow their heart, go where the tingle takes them, and pray that readers come along for the ride.

Early last year I received a major tingle that gave me a character with a truly unique problem and an equally unique set of skills. And it’s taken me down a brand new path of suspense and intrigue. It’s a thrilling trilogy that is broad and wide and incredibly exciting and quite different to anything written in the market today. And that’s all I’m saying.

The Ludlow Hall stories will continue. As will the off shoot Ludlow Nights world. There are more vampyre stories—I’m really just getting started in that world because it Will Not Let Me Go. The vampyres have been a slow burn, but they’ve found their readers. It was a huge blessing to have three PNR books sitting high in the Amazon and iBook store paid charts in October/November 2016. I’ll continue to write fast paced romance with laughs and tears and hot guys like the Monroe brothers and the Kennedy brothers (I’ve already got the character problems and issues all lined up and ready to go). And best of all I have the tingle that is refusing to let me put it aside.

All I need now is to get better from the flu from hell which has laid all three of us who live in this house on our backs for almost eight weeks.

After over twelve months of planning, writing Sean and Katherine’s story, and getting all my ducks in a row in time for Christmas – it’s now time for the first of The GOLDDIGGERS short reads. Aw, girls, have I had fun with these! Up first, our Ellie, who stole my heart. I hope she steals your heart, too:

A weekly tale of love and lust best describes the brand new short romance reads from USAToday bestselling author CC MACKENZIE. Let’s face it sometimes we’re in a hurry or not in the mood for a committed book relationship, or a series. Sometimes we want it quick and fast, a bit like a book one-night-stand.

The stories are set in the world of Burlesque with glitter, love, desire, music and dance where girls tease and tantalize. The stories stand-alone, unrelated to the next, except they are set in the same world of the GOLDDIGGERS. And CC will release an original story on a Friday to get you in the mood for the weekend.

The GOLDDIGGERS series of thirty minutes of fun romance from CC MACKENZIE – for busy people everywhere – grab one now!

ELLIE

I sure didn’t intend to see him.

Or fall for him.

Or have anything to do with the mesmerizing Noah Blake.

Meeting him had been a complete and utter shock to the system, my reaction took me by surprise. In my line of work, I meet new people all the time and none of them impressed me the way Noah did. Isn’t that just typical in life? A girl can meet hundreds of people and they don’t touch her where it matters, but then she meets the one who means everything…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Thing is, I’m a Golddigger, and proud of it. We make the Pussycat Dolls look like kittens. We work hard to achieve one goal, being the best. And to do that we do not need distractions like, for example, men. A Golddigger’s focus is on one thing, her performance. A Golddigger’s priority is the continued success of our Burlesque troupe. Thing is, I learned the hard way men didn’t like coming a poor second in a woman’s life. They appeared to be panic-stricken by a career driven, successful woman. I’ve been called “hard work,” “stroppy,” and “pigheaded.”

Like the rest of the Golddiggers, being free of emotional ties works well for me. Trust me, I had no long term plan to live happy-ever-after.

But then I met Noah.

And he stole my diamanté encrusted panties, and my whole world fell apart…

Aaaand in other news, the Vampyre Legal Chronicles has been ripping through the bestseller charts in Amazon USA, but also the iBOOKS Store USA. MARCUS was #1 in Paranormal and Romantic Comedy and #6 in the store overall. JAMES is #19 in the paid Paranormal category and DANIEL has just broken the top 100 in the paid store, too. Three books in the top 100 is a huge deal for me. I haven’t been there since 2013 with the first three of the Ludlow Hall books. I’m sharing yesterday’s screen shot of JAMES for posterity.

And don’t forget on Monday we have another peek into the life of the Ferranti Family, and a big surprise!

For all you paranormal romance lovers out there, I’m thrilled to announce that Book four of The Vampyre Legal Chronicles, ADAM, is out today.

Here’s the blurb:

“We must not be defeated…”

Each night her dreams of him keep the nightmares of her visions at bay. All she sees is his face. All she hears his voice. And she foretells of his death.

Tonight, in a world gone mad, foreseer Mhari MacDonald will behold the man who is both light and dark, redemption and seduction.

He is Adam Gillespie – Vampyre Prince.

And he is hers.

Tonight, Mhari will meet the man doomed to be her mate…

the man her love will destroy…

EXCERPT:

Mhari raced into the bedroom, and hauled open the closet door.

She pulled on thick black thermal leggings, a long-sleeved thermal beneath a warm sweater, thick socks, waterproof boots of soft rubber, all topped off by a thick duck down jacket the color of bleached bone. The jacket had a hood, but she crammed a beanie on her head and thrust thermal gloves into the pockets. She sped into the kitchen, grabbed a banana and a couple of apples, stuffed them inside her jacket. She didn’t need water. The Grampian Highlands in Scotland were covered in snow and had plenty of teeming burns.

Heart beating fast and her mind racing even faster, she sped across the sitting room to the open French doors to peer over the balcony to the ground three floors below.

She had no money, not even a credit card, but she didn’t care.

Far in the distance she recognized a couple of Munros, mountains over three thousand feet high. The trek home through deep snow might be tricky. But it wasn’t far, maybe fifteen miles, maybe less, and when she hit a main road she could do it. Once she was home, she’d never let Adam Gillespie anywhere near her.

Abruptly, the searing ache in her heart told her it didn’t want her to leave Adam.

And it was that single and incredibly foolish thought that hooked her leg over the balcony.

With her booted foot, she carefully shoved snow off the stone ledge.

Hanging onto the railing, she bounced a little to test her weight on the ledge. It didn’t budge, so she carefully shuffled to the left, and finally took a breath when her hands clutched metal.

The downpipe was sturdy.

The climb down had a couple of hairy moments that brought her heart into her mouth.

If she slipped the fall would surely kill her, or at the very least break a few bones.

The thought entered her mind that if Adam could see her, he’d go ballistic, but she didn’t want to think of him. Not now.

Her feet hit solid ground.

And she was off.

Her breath was sucking freezing particles of air into lungs that felt too tight. And all the while her ears strained to catch the first shout of alarm she fully expected to hear behind her. She ran. As she dug in to climb up, up, the steep hillside, it wasn’t long before her thigh muscles were burning.

Once, twice, three times, she tripped and fell flat on her face in the snow, hidden stems trapping her ankles and bruising her shins, her knees and elbows.

Scrambling to her feet again and again, Mhari literally threw herself into a thick forest of Scots pine trees.

Only once did she risk a look back, to catch her breath, to gaze at the castle far below.

Dear God, it looked stunningly beautiful, like something straight out of the Brothers Grimm, as it sat nestled in a glen on the edge of a wide loch, surrounded by mountains and hills. A dark winding tar macadam road going in the other direction had been cleared of snow. It was tempting to take the easy route home. But she knew Adam would have everyone looking for her, once he found her missing. She’d taken time to close the French doors behind her and now she was thankful for her quick thinking. He’d never consider she’d climbed out of the window, not until it was too late and she was long gone.

She hoped.

The thought of him and the way her mouth still throbbed, swollen, from his kiss had her tongue run over her bottom lip. Mhari could still taste him there. The scent of him, of man, seemed to cling to her skin. The ache in her chest, in the region of her heart, made her stiffen her resolve. Her heart still belonged to her. He might have stolen a part of it, but her heart wasn’t broken. And she was determined her heart was going to stay that way.

For a moment, she panicked, her clear footprints left in the snow would alert Adam and his Centuri to her escape route, but the thought had no more entered her head when thick flakes began to drift down from a leaden sky.

It seemed someone in the universe was looking after her.

She sent up a quick prayer of thanks.

Turning her back on the castle, and on the creature she felt sure had captured a tiny piece of her heart, Mhari’s ears listened to the stillness and the utter silence behind her, and heard nothing.

She was free.

End of Excerpt.

Please remember that all my books stand alone with no cliffhangers.

For exclusive content and more information about deliciously handsome vampyres and the women who bring them to their knees, you can sign-up for my Vampyre Legal Chronicles Newsletter HERE!

Next in the series will be book five, CONSTANTINE, due in February 2017.

I can’t believe book four of The Vampyre Legal Chronicles, ADAM, is out on June 28th 2016. I’ve had the best time writing Adam and Mhari’s story. They are an amazing couple who challenge each other every single step of the way on the path to true love.

Here’s the blurb:

This Book Stands Alone – No Cliffhanger

“We must not be defeated…”

Each night her dreams of him keep the nightmares of her visions at bay. All she sees is his face. All she hears his voice. And she foretells of his death.
Tonight, in a world gone mad, foreseer Mhari MacDonald will behold the man who is both light and dark, redemption and seduction.
He is Adam Gillespie – Vampyre Prince.
And he is hers.
Tonight, Mhari will meet the man doomed to be her mate…
the man her love will destroy…

Excerpt:

She’d have killed for a hot bath. A big, deep whirlpool of rose scented oil and foam, or failing that a man with good hands. Hands that knew how to give an exceptional shoulder and neck rub.

Mhari MacDonald passed the time fantasizing about both, while she waited for her boss, Professor Redford, to wind down. Bubbles up to her chin, her hair piled up as she lay her aching head on a soft cushion, and let all the cares of the world simply float away.

A wave of fatigue threatened to floor her, but Mhari kept her eyes straight ahead, and remained standing to attention in her nurses’ uniform; black rubber clogs, navy pants, and a navy blue cotton tunic edged with white piping which denoted her rank. The sleeves were short. Her skin felt tight and raw from the chemical scrub. Her pores reeked of disinfectant, too. She shivered. Jeez, the room was freezing. Seemed the people who ran the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh had cut back on heating for staff offices.

Mhari waited for the axe to fall.

She didn’t have long to wait.

Professor Redford, a tyrant at the best of times, tossed her pen on the desk.

She sat back in her chair, and peered at Mhari over the top of black framed reading glasses.

“You’re one of my best nurses, and now this? I will not accept it,” she said in a high-pitched nasally voice. Today the tone grated on Mhari’s nerves. Nerves shot to hell with the stress and strain of fighting a losing battle with an airborne Ebola virus that had spun out of control. Since Mhari reckoned she had nothing to say in response to the Professor’s statement, she kept her mouth shut.

The only sound in the room was the relentless tick, tick, tick, from the clock on the wall. Another endless moment of being considered by cold grey eyes over the top of those damn glasses, and Mhari MacDonald was barely holding on to patience with her fingernails.

After four weeks as a head triage nurse running a team working hard to contain a disease that scythed without mercy, man, woman and child, Mhari felt she’d learned a lot more than patience. She’d learned the bitter lesson no matter how much a person cared, no matter how much experience and dedication a person brought to bear, there were some battles dedicated medical care and science could not win.

The Ebola virus was one of them.

Mhari shifted from one sore foot to the other.

She’d covered three shifts, which meant thirty-six hours on her feet.

And two hundred and forty-one dead.

Her heart clenched.

In her mind her patient’s heartfelt pleas for help as they passed from life into death broke more than her heart.

She tried not to think of the number.

No human being should die as a number.

Three hours ago, she’d used a permanent marker to write the number on the forehead of a nine-month old baby boy.

Her mind flew back to the precise moment, to the reason why she was standing in front of her boss instead of lying face down on her bed.

Inside the sealed suit, which filtered air into her hazmat headgear, the suck and exhale of her breath had sounded too loud. Two days ago, she’d wept when she’d lifted the desperately ill little body from his dead mother’s arms. When he’d been conscious, Mhari’s face behind the clear plastic helmet had terrified the child. She’d rocked him, held him close as he’d taken his last breath. A child who was one of many in a ward over-filled with the dying. Inside the suit she couldn’t smell bodily fluids. But Mhari imagined she could. Blue plastic shoe covers stuck to human waste on the floor. The progression of the disease that was Ebola; flu like symptoms, headache, fatigue, fevers, and then an escalation into delirium with bleeding from eyes, nose and ears, as internal organs liquefied, which made the corpse and anything it touched incredibly infectious.

After pictures of the dead were taken, the bodies were burned.

In an attempt to speed up the process and control the spread of disease, the authorities had automated body disposal. Crematoriums with vast ovens burning twenty-four-seven had been built in the grounds of every hospital. The sweet smoke of death was a pale grey murk over every city in the land. There wasn’t time to read last rites, or say a prayer. Robots, prototypes made in Japan, lifted and placed the deceased onto a conveyor belt leading directly into the ovens. The dead were cremated with an efficiency not seen since the second world war.

When she’d used a black marker to write two hundred and forty-one on the child’s forehead, Mhari’s eyes had stung.

Her throat closed.

Her hands had been shaking uncontrollably as she’d taken pictures.

But when she’d handed the baby to a robot, that was when Mhari knew she couldn’t do this.

And something inside her cracked.

Broken.

Fractured.

Now standing in front of her boss, Mhari lifted hands that trembled from exhaustion, and rammed a loose hairpin into her throbbing scalp.

She welcomed the hurt.

The pain told her she was alive.

The pain told her she was one of the lucky few.

Professor Redford, head of infectious diseases at the Western General Hospital, was a martinet for tidiness and order. Hair was not permitted to touch the shoulders of her nurses. The woman herself was neat, and a stickler for the rules.

She reflected it was a pity Mhari was a regular breaker of said rules, disorganized and so far from neat, it wasn’t funny. Her hair was a case in point, and seemed to symbolize her lively personality. There were a variety of shades from a delicate ash blond to rich brown to a vivid red gold. It was long and heavy and hated confinement of any kind. A bit like Mhari herself, it was disobedient and obstinate, yet soft and appealing.

It had been the appeal of Mhari’s somewhat unconventional looks and personality that had prompted the Professor to hire her in the first place. That and her talent of dealing with difficult and complicated cases, plus the way she ran a team.

Professor Redford recognized a natural ability which had the potential to put her department on the map. With the male contingent on her team, Mhari’s face and body were undoubtedly a plus, too. Mhari just had to bat those thick lashes and junior doctor’s rushed to do her bidding. The Professor couldn’t really in all good conscience call Mhari beautiful, but she was spectacular. The girl’s features were sculpted and pointed and undeniably highborn. Fine brows curved over wide, lidded eyes that seemed too big for her narrow face, were a stunning pale violet.

“I refuse to lose you. You are one of the most valuable members of my team.”

In response, the girl’s hands were shaking as she unpinned her little badge of silver wings, a sign of her seniority, and laid it on the desk.

It appeared her nurse was stubborn, too.

Eyes fixed on Mhari’s, she picked up her letter of resignation and ripped it into shreds.

The Professor might be neck deep in a crisis, and have a hospital to run, but she was well aware Mhari had reached the end of her tether. However, she was not prepared to let one of her best nurses walk away when she knew the girl would live to regret it. What Mhari needed was a break. Fair enough. She’d give her one.

On the whole the Professor was pleased with Mhari’s enthusiasm, her intelligence and her energy, but she had a distressing habit of letting her mind drift at times. It gave a sort of other-worldly quality to her features. Plus, she’d soon discovered that in spite of appearances, Mhari had an unfortunate tendency to forget her place, and re-write the rules whenever it suited her. More than once she’d come upon Mhari giving spirited and unwarranted advice to a junior doctor too dazzled to question the girl’s apparently infinite wisdom. When Mhari was reminded of who was the boss here, her smile gave the distinct impression she was enjoying a private joke. Whatever her shortcomings, Professor Redford refused to lose her.

Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of the Professor’s thoughts, Mhari did what she invariably did when her mind wasn’t busy. She let it drift back to the last vision she’d experienced and tried, uselessly as it turned out, to understand the meaning behind it.

Since she’d been a small child, flashes of scenes from the future had occupied her mind. Details of her visions came to her in spurts and starts, and out of time order. With her maternal gramma as teacher, she’d studied her gift, or curse, of foresight. At twenty-one she’d been left without family and virtually no money in the bank. However, she’d continued to work her way through her nursing degree, and supplemented her small income with a variety of odd jobs from a bottle tossing bartender in one of Edinburgh’s hot spots, to a professional dog-walker. She had an affinity with animals. Between her education and employment, Mhari had been left with few moments of free time. Even those had been set aside to work on her gift.

To Mhari, the gift of foresight was a vocation. Her entire life had been guided by a grandmother who, like her granddaughter, was fey. Her gramma used to say they’d been touched by an angel. Mhari didn’t know about that, but she’d had no time for attachments of a personal nature. She was twenty-three now, and people simply fascinated her, but there were very few with whom she could say she’d ever got close to. Her busy brain seemed to enjoy understanding and analyzing complex relationships, and yet her personal understanding of them came about exclusively second-hand. Her gift of foresight gave her work with the sick a quality of keen observation and a surprising depth of empathy, together with an emotional intelligence often lacking in a medical profession more concerned with ticking boxes and achieving unrealistic targets. For the greater part of her life, Mhari’s emotions had found their release in her vocation of caring for others and helping them cope with their pain, be it physical or psychological.

But putting herself last had taken a heavy toll.

The psychic energy needed to help souls cross over the bridge from life to death was depleted.

Mhari MacDonald’s emotional well was bone dry.

She needed to get away from the pain and grief she dealt with every second of every hour of every day.

The world as she knew it and the people in it, her friends and loved-ones, all gone.

There was nothing she could do about it or give hope and solace to those suffering.

This broke her heart, and lowered her spirit.

So she was following her intuition, her gut.

She’d already packed a car with her few personal possessions.

This evening she was planning to head north into the snowy-capped Grampian Highlands of Scotland, to find respite in the tiny bothy that had been in the MacDonald family for hundreds of years.

She was going to find her destiny… and, perhaps, the man who filled her dreams.

It was time.

“I’m sorry, Professor, but I need to go.”

When her boss nodded and smiled, Mhari blinked in surprise.

There was not a lot of love lost between them.

So when the Professor stood, picked up the silver Angel’s wings, walked around the desk and pinned it on Mhari’s lapel, the gesture of support was so unexpected it brought a sting to her eyes.

“Take a break. Let’s say a month or two. And then return to us rested and ready. Do not lose faith, child. A cure or treatment will be found.”

Not soon enough for baby number two hundred and forty-one, Mhari wanted to say.

Instead, she nodded.

“I can’t promise anything.”

The Professor smiled again, this time a curve of the lips that seemed to hold a secret.

As a busy author, I’m working on The Vampyre Legal Chronicles, book five, CONSTANTINE, as well as a couple of other projects.

My next release will be SEAN, book ten, of The Ludlow Hall Romances (with plenty more to come). And a super-secret project released after SEAN, which I’m incredibly excited about and will share the details as soon as I am able.

If you are going to be in the area, please drop me a line HEREso that I can keep a look out for you and I have some goodies, too. (Nothing like bribery). I’d LOVE to meet you guys in the flesh, so to speak!!

We’ve only got one life, so we’re as well living it to the max. This isn’t going to be a deep post about the meaning of life, btw. So you can all reeeelax, after all this is me you’re dealing with.

Recently I’ve been talking to a couple of peeps who are a little itty bitty disappointed with what life is tossing them and they’re feeling blue as if all the energy they’ve used devoting themselves to a certain path has been a waste of time and they’re lying flat on their back on the the ground gazing up with hungry eyes at the sheer cliff face they have to climb and it all seems too much. And I get that, I really do. The thing I’ve been struggling with is how to help them and then I found this:

And the picture of the baby is my son when he was twenty-four hours old, after a twenty-six hour labour. He screamed into the world at a fighting weight of 10 pounds (I know, my eyes are crossing just thinking about it) and three weeks late. I’d taken a huge risk having him after losing his brother two years before, but someone was missing from my family. Thankfully H was right behind me. We took a risk and we’ve never regretted it.

Another risk, a professional risk for me, was to write in two genres. I can’t tell you the number of voices who said, ‘Don’t do it.’ Or, ‘Your readers will hate it.’ Or, ‘Write under a pen name.’ And, ‘You’ll stretch yourself too thin.’ They might be right about that, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. There are two books out in the series with another three ‘under construction’ and I’m way behind with book three due to events beyond my control. But you know what? Readers – awesome readers – are waiting for the rest. How amazing is that?

So just for them, here are the three newly minted covers of The Vampyre Legal Chronicles designed by the lovely Gabrielle Prendergast of Cover Your Dreams and I promise book three will be here as soon as possible.

What risks have you taken in your lives?

You know I love hearing from you guys, so share your stories with The World!!

A Stormy Spring – A Ludlow Hall Story 2 – Click to read / download first few chapters

Email Me – I Love to Hear from my Readers

CC MacKenzie Blog

*Waving atcha, guys!” Who’s excited about the Royal Wedding…… We’re having a party in this house tomorrow to celebrate the wedding of the year. Cannot wait! I’m working so hard on great stories for you. HITCHED TO THE ITALIAN … Continue reading →

Hello, my darlings, There’s a rumour going around that next Monday we’ll see the hottest early May day holiday since records began. We can only hope! Grab a coffee or a glass of wine… EPISODE TWO In his office suite … Continue reading →

Hello my darlings! I’ve been up the wall with a redevelopment project in the house that has grown into one hot mess. I’m in the middle of electrical cables, plumbing and joiners and tearing my hair out. From today, … Continue reading →

Hello, my darlings! We’ve actually had a heat wave – a mini heat wave they say – which has brought us the hottest April day since 1949! Love it! We’re also in the process of major detailing work on … Continue reading →

Waving atcha, my darlings! There’s a rumour going around that a big golden ball will rise in a blue sky tomorrow. I believe it’s called the sun and it’s been a while since we’ve seen it around here. I’m thinking … Continue reading →

Greetings, my darlings! We have cloud and wind and rain. Come on, Spring! Here’s part two of the Ludlow Hall short story… It’s the morning after the night before at The Dower House, and Emily finally gets her chance … Continue reading →

Hellooooo, I’ve been sick with a fever and the usual end of season bug. Roll on Spring! And here’s the first part of this week’s Ludlow Hall short story… It’s Friday and school’s out—The Dower house… After she’d found Bronte … Continue reading →

Hello, my darlings, Welcome to Friday’s sneak peak – it’s time to kick back and reeeeeelaxed… It’s a Saturday afternoon at The Dower house… Bronte, Rosie and Janine, are enjoying some girl time in the kitchen–family–dining space. The men, … Continue reading →